


come back to me now, it's after hours

by krautrock



Category: Opeth - Fandom, Porcupine Tree
Genre: M/M, Masturbation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:28:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krautrock/pseuds/krautrock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So Storm Corrosion was certainly a thing way back when! We even had like, twenty proper shippers or so. Out of a fanbase of thousands. (Drabbles, ficlets and random writings about That Big OTP that don't merit being published on their own.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Restraint

He is not the kind of man who does these things. After years and years of mastering his emotions, building a wall around his personal space, there was no way he’d go so low. He thinks this as he locks his bedroom door. He thinks this as he collapses against the wall with a loud thud, exhaling deeply before sliding towards the floor. He’s not the kind of man who touches himself.

                Alright, maybe once a month, but purely out of natural urges, after all, he _is_ only a man. But what pulled him into locking himself in his room well before bedtime wasn’t a natural urge, unless natural urges crashed into his house one week at a time and had adorable Swedish accents. Something about Mikael had changed throughout the years, something very unnerving. He was out of his chrysalis, the shy posture of his old caterpillar self being replaced by bright, seductive butterfly wings.  Everything from his curlier, shorter hair to the way he moves his arms, down to how he always wears his pants too low and his shirts too short reflects a more carefree and confident outlook on life. Like he’s finally completely at ease with everything he is. And it’s _damn sexy_. The small protective crush Steven had nurtured for quite some time burns now as the most perfect and violent kind of lust, and he feels too old for this, particularly so when he looks at his younger, radiant friend’s warm smile and remembers that he’s just another person in his life. The mere thought chews a hole towards his recently thawed heart and malevolently teases a bite before threatening to tear it to pieces.

                His desperate erection throbs violently as he finally grips it and tries to set up a slow pace, in an attempt to regulate his pounding heart. He only needs to think about Mikael. Anything about him, from the way his mouth moves when he’s speaking to the way his toes curl when there’s a spacey section in the middle of a song. All those things Steven has involuntarily memorized. Every little twitch of his hips, every breath down his neck when they’re in the studio, all the ways Mikael finds to accidentally expose his midriff or a generous amount of ass… they make Steven so hard he’s left incapable of even naming every member of the original King Crimson lineup.

                His hand is moving freely now, and the sound of heavy breathing has all but disappeared. Calmer, he allows his mind to move into darker territories. The kind of thoughts he has when Mikael calls him a cunt or refuses to stop soaking through his wine stash. When he smokes twenty Camels in a row and Steven can only watch as his deepest desire sits in front of him, blowing smoke rings with his eyes closed, allowing his lips to draw obscene, careless movements.  That Mikael, he wants to pull him across his lap on that red leather couch, pull his pants down, not a difficult task considering they’re kept permanently at risk of falling, and spank his ass mercilessly, drinking in Mikael’s choked gasps and moans, not stopping until the pale flesh becomes bright pink, quivering and too hot to resist softly caressing. Then, he’d make him kneel with his elbows pressed on the back of the couch and teasingly nibble at the skin he just finished abusing, kissing a trail across the tenderness of Mikael’s inner thighs, making him shiver, arch his back and turn his head around to give his master a pleading _fuck me_ look. Steven wonders just how much and how loud Mikael would moan as his fingers danced inside him, moving fast and ruthlessly as he prepared him for the pounding of his life. He wants to know these things, _needs_ to know them. After that, he’d press the tip of his cock to Mikael’s wet entrance, teasing a sudden movement before leaning in to whisper into his ear. _Tell me you want it._ A high pitched noise, quite embarrassed. _Say it, slut._ Mikael would his head, turn around to face him, cheeks red and swollen, as well as his arousal-hazy eyes could. _Fuck me… make me yours._

                He comes silently, with a long, violent shudder that strains every muscle in his body almost to the limit, blanking his vision for a few seconds until he reopens his eyes and tries to get his slumped, martyrized frame up and into his double bed, rolling off to a side as if his ghostly lover was still beside him, smoking a cigarette as he usually does.


	2. Brevity

‘’Steve...’’

Mikael’s lips are parted, hot and quivering under the nervous thumb of his elder conspirer. The air is thick and heavy between them, anticipating the broken distance, and the rust of ten years leaves a narcotic aftertaste in their mouths. For a second Steven wonders if all of this was a colossal mistake, but a sudden hand on the back of his head forces him down again, and Mikael kisses back, hard, exactly the way Steven had imagined him to do, arms wrapping around his shoulders, tiny moans, and that sudden smile he feels against his mouth, it’s almost too much, and Steven’s head is a hazy mess of ifs and buts, but those lips are so soft and the lust he’s hidden for so long is all but unleashed, Mikael is hot and flustered under him, larger and stronger than he could ever be, yet so passive under his touch, and this is better than anything he could have ever fantasized about. He forces himself back, pressing their bodies together, leeching off the natural warmth of Mikael’s entire being, pressing him down on the couch, grinding down shamelessly between those thick Swedish thighs until he rips a delicious whimper from his throat.


	3. Insurrection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AKA that one story I submitted as my final high school ESL project. Full marks, weird stares.

#  **I**

 

Midnight. The almost deserted streets of London are bathed in the usual sickening orange light, a light not of enlightenment or salvation, a light that for millions around the world spells the end of an industrialized day, the entrance into a period of time when the illusion of unloneliness is finally broken, when mayors and thieves mingle to become mere shadows roaming alone and indistinguishable. This orange curse illuminates the architecture of sadness.

From above, this tragic moment becomes more evident, as if you or I were God himself, contemplating his own bloody mess. All-powerful but powerless.  Nobody notices her up there, and if they did, they would not try to stop her. A woman all clad in red stands on the edge of a building, looking down, feeling repulsed yet strangely attracted to the cursed street lamps awaiting below. She remembers what brought her here. The nightmares, the terrifying screams of the creatures that haunt her sleep, always changing and ethereal yet as real and tangible as the crimson shawl which envelops her tightly, a gift from her mother. She has not slept well for months, the fear of her demons growing stronger by the day. She’s had enough. If only a guardian angel would come…

She takes a step forward as if she knew that she would suddenly begin to walk on air, and falls towards the orange lights. It lasts two seconds, yet feels like one hundred years. When she opens her eyes a minute later, she sees herself lying on the pavement, surrounded by a pool of what is quite obviously blood, yes she feels no pain, and suffered no injuries. It is not her blood, and she barely notices a couple of feathers mixed into it, before the rush of emotions makes her close her eyes.

The papers will comment on it for two days, as they usually do, with some claim of a miracle or a hidden conspiracy, and the woman in red will never dream again.  
  
  


#  **II**

 

_ I was just doing my duty _ , he repeats silently, limping his way across a dark alley, scared at how his skin looks so human under the pervasive orange light. He is shoeless, feeling every rock and cigarette butt, every wad of spit and remnants of lust that permeate the ground, and naked, he suffers the wet coldness of the polluted air that surrounds him and envelops the city in a gentle and transparent chokehold. Protected only by a pair of white wings, blooming from his back as naturally as if men were supposed to have them, he painfully inches forward. His left wing is broken, and he knows he is earthbound. Breaking the woman’s fall, he had hurt himself in a way unknown to his kind, and touching human soil, this angel is as visible as that damned light wishes him to be, he is flesh, and he bleeds heavily from his wing. It was only his duty, to protect this woman, to be her guardian angel against the tormenting demons. Whatever happens next, he should be returned to his Almighty Father, as a hero of courage and light, a self-sacrificial pillar of the heavenly hierarchy. He leaves a trail of blood behind, slowly and regretfully leaving his faith in rescue as well.

He does not notice the man following him until he is close enough to smell him. Chamomile and rust, maybe some dry tears. He stops. If whoever is following him was going to make a fuss, he would have made it already. And besides, he is too weak to fight back against any attempt of an attack.

‘’Hey.’’ The voice that comes is unexpectedly gentle, almost scared. ‘’Please come with me, if they find you here you’ll be in trouble.’’

The angel turns around and looks over his injured wing, catching sight of a small-framed man, looking slightly older than him, if he were human and aged in accordance to the Gregorian calendar, with a sharp nose and heart-shaped lips. He hadn’t done a very good job of shaving his face, his hair was straight, reaching the end of his neck in a dark caramel color, and he dressed as if an alien had studied Earth for many years in search of the clothes that would make him as bland and unnoticeable as possible. But he looked hopeful and anxious, almost like he’d found something he had always been expecting. More importantly for the angel, he didn’t look sickening or undistinguishable under the street lights. He appeared used to them, they appeared used to him, and they lit his face in a natural, calming fashion, as if he was one with the loneliness of the entire world. 

‘’Please… you’re hurt.’’ He sounded desperate. ‘’I can heal you! What will happen if the wrong people find you? What kind of experiments… I don’t even want to think about that… Come with me. I’ll hide you until you heal up, please.’’

Turning around and realizing that he had to respond, the angel paused to gain confidence. Although he could understand every dialect of all the nations in the known world, he hadn’t spoken a word of human language in his entire celestial life. 

‘’How can I know you’re not one of those… people?’’ He spoke with some difficulty, and a noticeable accent. The other man though it sounded almost Scandinavian.

‘’You don’t.’’ A hand reached out timidly. ‘’But we’re both lonely, and anything is better than that.’’

The offer sounded tempting, so the angel trusted whatever destiny was reserved for him, took the hand he had been offered, and let himself be led through a series of small, narrow streets, a dark labyrinth, each passing second growing more restless to finally be protected from that dissolving orange light.

 

 

#  **III**

 

He was woken by a stray ray of light, possibly from a nearby window, the only vestige of the existence of such a thing as outside in the darkened room. His first instinct was to reach for his broken wing, finding it still sore, but lovingly bandaged and clean of blood. Remembering the stranger’s kindness, he smiled to himself. He was being hosted on the highest floor of a strange end-of-century looking building that he hadn’t been able to take a proper look at the night before, it was too dark and his eyes were almost closed in a vain attempt to eliminate the orange curse from his sight.

He noticed the bed he was lying on, how he could feel everything a human would, waking up in the morning to start another day, go to work, and come back at dark, under the street lights, hearing the car horns and frustration of rush hour, except he could not do these things. He was a recluse, a dark secret, hidden for his own safety. The lush fabric of the sheets stirred against his naked body, and suddenly, feelings arose in him that he had only seen and heard of. Tact, the need for physicality. How easy it was to understand humanity’s love of the bodily pleasures after feeling even the lightest form. It was a simple feeling, a soft fabric running over his skin, but in his sleepy haze, it felt a lot like… like home.

His wing still hurt and pulsed once in a while, painfully reminding him that this wasn’t home anymore.  Father must have lost track of him, now flesh, capable of bleeding; only keeping that hulking pair of now-useless wings to assert his position as a higher being. Once healed, he would return by his own wings to the place where flesh does not roam.

There was a gentle knock at the door, and as it opened, new light was shed across the room, allowing the angel to have a quick but thorough look at how it was furnished. Besides his bed, tall, wide and deserving of its own canopy, there was only a closet and an extremely comfortable-looking armchair, all these decorated in a decadent  _ rocaille _ style, complete with golden accents, making them appear bigger and more imposing than they actually were.  There were a few paintings on the walls, all in golden frames, mostly landscapes, but also a nature mort with a basket of red apples, and a portrait of a girl, looking to be about five or six, crying while looking up.

‘’I see you’re awake already.’’ The man from the previous day stood at the door. 

The angel sat up on the bed, shivering as the sheet slid down his naked form. He opened his mouth to speak, but decided against it. He found that he was hungry, another effect of his temporary human condition, and suddenly remembered hearing a tale of the old Greeks, more specifically, a sentence delivered with the weight of a death penalty: ‘’He who eats the fruit of Hell shall not leave.’’. A sudden fear of being earthbound forever struck him. Despite having a mission on Earth, he had never walked on the ground until the previous night, and pain was also a new and paralyzing experience. While he though this, absent-mindedly furrowing his brows, the man had walked towards the bed, sitting at his feet, eyes always fixed on that otherworldly being. The first thing anyone would notice about this angel’s face is how big his eyes were; not only big, but warm, glittering and of the most comforting brown. He had a moustache, some remnants of a goatee, and hair that reached down to his elbows. This was a French academic portrait of Jesus, any of them, come to life. Finally, their gazes met, and the angel snapped back to reality.

_ Thank you _ was the first thing that came out of his mouth. He tried to speak again, but was interrupted.

‘’Don’t mention it. But listen, your wing is badly infected. You must have wandered for a long time because it’s spread towards the other one.’’ Said the man, fiddling with some papers he was holding, possibly his own handmade medical reports. ‘’I can try to save it, but if the infection is too severe, you’ll have two options…’’ He paused.  Suddenly, the angel felt a shiver along his spine. ‘’You either lose your wings, or your life. But I’ll do my best to save both.’’

The man looked perfectly calm and collected, even as he reached over to wipe the small tear that was now running from the mortified angel’s face.

‘’By the way, my name is Steven. I guess I’ll be your doctor from now on.’’ The angel threw himself into Steven’s arms, painfully folding his wings as far back as he could to make way for the other man’s embrace, sobbing profusely at the mere possibility of losing his wings. What if Steven couldn’t save them? How would he live in a world he’d only observed from above? Would Steven help him? And why couldn’t he stop repeating his savior’s name in his head? Steven… It means  _ he who wears a crown _ . A king, which is what he was now, at least inside that bedroom.

‘’Steven…’’ The angel whispered between sobs. ‘’If you can’t save my wings and I have to stay here, will you still look after me?’’ He was looking up at the other man, eyebrows furrowed up in passive hope.  Almost afraid of another desertion. 

The doctor smiled a predatory smile, unnoticeable to the other man, and, ran a gentle hand through the angel’s soft curly hair.

‘’Only if you tell me your name.’’

A few seconds passed by in silence, but the answer finally came.

‘’Mikael.’’

 


End file.
